DSquared Hospitality Files 83-Worker WARN Notice for Bellevue Closure, Effective Dec 20

DSquared Hospitality Company, doing business as Sidekicks Pub, has filed a WARN notice reporting 83 workers affected by a closure in Bellevue, Washington. The notice date is Oct 21, 2026, and the planned effective date is Dec 20, 2026. The record comes through the Washington Employment Security Department and is classified as an official filing — a direct government record, not a secondary report.

The filing, as reported

The registry's filing page lists the employer as DSquared Hospitality Company dba Sidekicks Pub, the event type as closure, and the source classification as permanent. The reported location is Bellevue — no street address or site details are published with the filing, which is normal for Washington's records.

With a notice date of Oct 21, 2026, this is the newest official notice date currently in the Washington archive — and it is the most recent dated filing on the national registry. It is, in other words, the freshest WARN record in the country at the time of writing.

Sixty days, to the day

Oct 21 to Dec 20 is exactly 60 days. That is the federal WARN Act's standard advance-notice period for qualifying plant closures and mass layoffs. A filing that lands precisely on the 60-day line is the textbook version of how the law is supposed to work: the full minimum notice given before the employment loss takes effect.

Whether federal WARN or a state requirement triggered this particular filing depends on the employer's size and the specifics of the event — the registry records what was reported, and it records this one as filed. What is notable is the size: 83 workers puts this filing on the smaller end of the registry's 2026 notices, a reminder that the WARN data is not only a record of thousand-worker headlines. Smaller closures like this one make up much of the day-to-day volume in the filings.

Washington leads the nation

This filing lands in the state that currently tops the national layoff tracker. In the 90-day window through Oct 22, the registry holds 698 notices reporting 64,988 workers, with 33 counts unavailable. Washington accounts for 16,938 of those reported workers — the highest of any state — followed by California at 14,224, Illinois at 4,626, Texas at 3,652, and Ohio at 3,180.

Washington's full imported archive holds 1,523 non-cancelled notices reporting 249,206 workers affected. In 2026 alone: 128 notices and 27,808 reported workers. Forty-six notices carry future effective dates. During the last 365 days, the archive contains 156 eligible official filings for Washington reporting 32,014 affected workers, with zero unavailable worker counts — an unusually complete reporting picture by national standards.

Reading the numbers

A closure filing is the most definitive event type in the WARN data. Unlike a "layoff," which can be partial, phased, or reversed, a closure means the site itself is reported as shutting down. The registry classifies this Bellevue filing as permanent.

Two caveats apply to every figure in this article. First, these are reported plans, not confirmed job losses. A WARN filing describes what the employer reported on the notice date; the numbers can change through cancellations, amendments, or phased effective dates. Second, the WARN system is not a census of layoffs. Coverage and reporting rules vary by state, and missing coverage is not the same as zero layoffs — totals exclude any worker counts that were reported as unavailable.

The Dec 20 effective date also carries a seasonal note: it lands in the week before Christmas. Late-December effective dates are a recurring pattern in the filings as employers carry out planned closures before year-end. For the 83 affected workers, the practical consequences follow the standard path after a filing — unemployment insurance eligibility, COBRA continuation coverage for health benefits, and back-pay remedies if the employer failed to meet its notice obligations.

Data source: Layoff Atlas.